Tuesday Tip - Wedding Invitations
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Our wedding suite
Wedding Invitations is the part of the process I have been most excited for! Fast forward to yesterday, I learned that the mailbox I dropped the invitations into was vandalized with all the mail being taken out of it. We’re 3.5 months out from our destination wedding & have to quickly scramble to figure out what we do next…
With this top of mind, my Tuesday Tip is a breakdown of Wedding Invitation Suites in hopes that this helps you!
Timing: You will hear a million different average timelines depending on your sources. Think about how much notice you would want and use that. Our wedding is a destination and we knew we wanted to send everything early to give people plenty of notice. Our wedding is in February, requires travel for most quests and we treated it like someone would be planning a mini vacation. Our Save the Dates were very early (9-10 months notice) & our wedding Invitation needed to beat the holiday rush (4 months notice).
Sending it early! We had a huge snafu and circumstance happen that our wedding planner had never heard of! Because we sent them so far in advance we can still meet the 3 month mark.
Design: Your design will be greatly dependent on what you are comfortable spending on an invite. For us, I looked at the invitation suite as commissioning art work we could later frame around our house. My sister had hired an artist for her wedding & it was my favorite keepsake. When it came time to plan mine I knew I wanted to hire an artist to create custom artwork. Other couples opt for more formal (letter pressed) or more casual (printed templates or e-vites). The look and feel was extremely important to me.
Expected Costs: These will vary greatly based on what type of design you select & who you use. When you are working with an artist the majority of the cost is for their time designing your suite & the art. This means the cost will be higher.
Designed Custom Invitation Suite: $4,000-$10,000
Custom Invitation Suite (not original artwork): $2,000-$5,000
Pre-Canned Design (Zola, theKnot etc): Under $1,000
Evite: Under $500
How to Choose: If the cost doesn’t scare you & you want to take the Designed Invitation Suite route, start browsing styles that you liked on Instagram. What I did was followed most of the luxury wedding planners in the area to see who they were working with. Have a call with the designer, review timelines & don’t cut corners in the design process. We for instance, didn’t get a mood board & our first drafts didn’t reflect what I wanted. My designer was nice about it, but had we taken the time to do it right from the start it would have been easier.
Mailing Your Invitation Suite: We had the stationer stuff our Wedding Save the Dates and she was adamant about Hand Stamping them. When I went to the post office to Mail the Wedding Invites, the guy told me to save time just put them in the Mailbox, they all need to be run through the machine so there is no difference. Trust me… Hand Stamping takes more time but you should definitely not drop them in a mailbox. You want to Hand Stamp them at the post office to ensure they get delivered neatly to their destination.
Here are some of my favorites, which ones do you like?
